Human Duality, Moral Transformation, and the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket

This article examines the representation of the Vietnam War in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). It contends that along with the directors’ attempts to portray the Vietnam War, and specifically U.S. intervention in it, both Coppola and Kubrick deal with the issues of human duality and moral transformation that every soldier inevitably undergoes in war. Focusing on the questions of war, morality, and masculinity, this article outlines the problem of personal and collective ethic change as it is displayed in the two cinematic examples